Zhijian Cup China Intelligence Construction and Application Competition is hosted by China Building Decoration Association, and supported by The Hong Kong Institute of Building Information Modelling (HKIBIM), Macau Building Information Modelling Association (MBIMA) and GHM Great Bay Area Institute of Urban Architecture (HK). In response to the relevant national policies, the competition was held to further promote the cutting-edge technologies in the AEC industries, such as Internet+, big data, block chain, BIM, CIM, pre-cast construction, digital management, Artificial Intelligence (AI), information platform, intelligent construction site, intelligent green construction, digital twins and intelligent operation & maintenance, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Dr Georgios Kapogiannis, the BIM director of the Geospatial and Geo-hazards Research Group, and his PhD student, Tianlun Yang, have participated in the competition. Their projects entitled with “Intelligent Refurbishment Environment and Modelling (IREM) referring to a methodology supporting decision making for Estate and Facilities Management” has obtained an outstanding result - Gold Price in the Higher Education category. This project is based on the real reconstruction of PMB416, 423 and 320 in campus, and kindly supported by Mr. Harry Hua, Director of IT Services.

The traditional design process has the weakness in coordination among design, construction, and facility management, which will cause delays in decision making. Furthermore, due to the limitation in traditional technologies and abstractness in design drawings, construction and facility management team have difficulties to have proper understandings regarding to the project design. It is a major problem as 2D drawings and simple 3D modelling cannot sufficiently support the project communication.

The research team has devoted to find an efficient way to support the coordination and communication between design and client team. Moreover, the research team also aimed to improve evaluation and decision-making process of the building project. Based on those real issues and problems, the research team has identified the key issue under the traditional mode: The lack of project understandings due to the poor design coordination and communication.

Dr Kapogiannis and his research team have worked in a pragmatically way and have devoted efforts to find solutions for solving technical limitations in building design development. In recent years, with the efforts from both academia and industries, the BIM technologies and theories have big progress. Many implementation strategies have been established to support workflows in design and construction companies. Beginning from current BIM technologies and strategies, the research team has compared the advantages and roles of each technology in AEC industries. Through the integration, optimisation, and test in real projects, the research team has concluded an innovative BIM strategy to support the sufficient communication between the design and the facility management team.

As being a stage during the information modelling process, panoramas images and real-time rendering can provide immersive experiences for different participant of the project. Through view in 360 degrees, the construction and facility management team can holistically understand the project design, which subsequently can support the project implementation. Through integrating different technologies such as VR, panoramas images, and real-time renderings, the design, construction, and asset management can have good coordination, which can lead to improve the decision-making process. The research team has successfully validated their proposed framework through this project.

The project has several innovative improvements:

1. The BIM technologies helps to generate visualised images and relevant technologies in a faster way.
2. Visualisation helps facility management team to understand the design in a better way.
3. The interaction between design and facility management team has been established.
4. Visualised solution improves the efficiencies of decision makings during the facilities management.